 |
Review: VR Troopers [Mega Drive] |
While Power Rangers, in its various guises, seems to be an unstoppable juggernaut of a franchise, back in the early-to-mid 1990s when it hit the screens, the show’s ‘creator’ Haim Saban didn’t seem to have that much faith in it, and created numerous spin-offs and similarly themed (in other words a Japanese action showed altered to have American characters) shows in the hope of recapturing Power Rangers’ runaway success.
However, none of these shows matched Power Rangers in terms of lifespan for numerous reasons, Big Bad Beetleborgs ran out of Japanese footage to cannibalise, Masked Rider offended the Japanese show’s creators so much they refused to give Saban any more, the one slightly more mysterious one is VR Troopers, which managed to go 2 Seasons before disappearing, it’s cancellation never having it’s reasoning defined. Some say poor ratings, some say they also ran out of Japanese footage…who knows, and at the end of the day who really cares? The series made enough money to warrant a toy line, and in 1995 saw 2 videogames, a Beat ’em Up for the Game Gear and today’s subject, the Megadrive game. A 32X version was apparently planned but scrapped, either due to the series or the console going tits up, I don’t actually remember seeing any version of it available at the time, and the internet isn’t exactly overflowing with info on it, which leads me to believe it wasn’t very popular anyway.
For those too young/old to have watched the show, a brief plot overview may be in order. Basically 3 teenagers/twenty-somethings who are all aces in karate, get transformed into ‘Virtual Reality Troopers’ to enter the ‘Virtual Realm’ and fight Grimlord, the alter ego of some evil businessman, and his goons. There are other things going on, like main trooper, blonde haired, blue eyed Ryan Steel’s dad being missing and his former partner, the trooper’s mentor, being stuck in a computer, not to mention something about a talking dog, but my memory is pretty hazy and it didn’t really make much sense to begin with, it was basically just Power Rangers given the ‘Virtual Reality’ (which was a big buzzword in the 90s for kids) spin. Each episode revolved around Ryan, along with his friends token black guy and tech-wiz JB Reese and token hot female Kaitlin Star fight a bunch of Grimlock’s ‘Skug’ goons before entering the Virtual Realm and fighting the monster of the week, usually using some form of crazy weapons or vehicles. What made the show funny was that it was actually made from a couple of Japanese shows, meaning you could never see Ryan, JB and Kaitlin in VR Trooper mode in the same scene, leading to Ryan having to be separated from the other 2 in some comical way each episode.
The Megadrive game is a Fighter, not too dissimilar in idea to Sega’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers game, apparently made by Saban themselves, seeing as I can’t find any mention of any other company. Given the nature of the show, I would have thought it would have lent itself better to a Beat ‘em Up, and indeed that’s what I thought I was getting when I bought it, but nope, it’s a straight-up fighter. You’ve got 3 modes to contend with, Story, Vs. and CPU Battle, Vs. being exactly what it says on the tin and CPU Battle giving you the option to select any of the game’s characters except endboss Kamelion and fight through the entire cast.
Story is naturally the main single player mode of the game, where you select one of the 3 troopers and battle through Grimlord’s minions because you’ve been sucked into his arcade game ‘Reality Barrier’ and apparently the only way out is to battle his ‘Mutant Cyborgs’ 1-on-1 in Best of 3 round contests. Before each fight we are treated to tips from the Troopers’ mentor Professor Hart, who looks terrifying in the game, and his tips are usually such game-breaking knowledge as “Don’t get hit by Tankotron’s cannon”, before Grimlord appears to talk some trash about how the featured monster is going to stomp you. After each round Jeb the talking dog witters some rubbish about being hungry or such, this is how the ‘story’ is moved along. To be honest it’s not any more stupid than I remember many of the episodes of the show being, so I can’t hold too much of a grudge against the game for it’s plot.
To complete story mode you’ve got to take on 9 foes in total, Tankotron, Decimator, Darkheart, Kongbot, The Magician, evil clones of the 3 Troopers (read: Palette Swaps) before fighting Kamelion. I have to confess I don’t really remember enough about the show to know if there were better enemies they could have chosen, or if any of the characters’ special moves reflect abilities in the show, although I do remember Darkheart was Ryan’s dad under some form of control, which seems glossed over here, and that Decimator was a recurring enemy. One thing that is disappointing about the enemy roster is that when you reach Kamelion, it turns out he is just a Shang Tsung-wannabe who transforms into other characters. This wouldn’t be so bad if The Magician didn’t also have that ability! The lack of Grimlord as a boss was also a bit surprising, but then they didn’t make a toy of him either so they clearly didn’t rate him much. I’d love to tell you there are huge differences between the way the 3 Troopers play, but asides from their special moves, I really didn’t notice any.
However, arguably the worst thing about Story mode is the ‘Bonus’ stages. Now, my understanding of Bonus Stages may be wrong, but I always thought it meant something good, cool, enjoyable, fun…you know like the ‘Test your might!’ bits in Mortal Kombat or beating up a car in Streetfighter 2. VR Troopers’ Bonus Stages are the most soul-destroying part of the game and severely soured my enjoyment of it. They come at the end of each fight, where your Trooper is transported to the ‘Battle Grid’ and attacked by an army of Skugs, 2 at a time. Sounds pretty cool doesn’t it? I actually had hopes for it, only to discover you can’t use special moves, getting your Trooper to do anything useful if you’ve a Skug either side of you and the only way to kill the Skugs is to knock them into each other. This means basically your only option is to get into a corner and jump-kick constantly until time runs out, and it’s worth noting that 10 seconds get added to the Bonus Stage each time, so by the last one you’re facing well over a minute of this. Couple in the fact that if you die during these then you have to start the preceding fight all over again and it makes you re-evaluate your definition of ‘Bonus’.
There is a thing that further hampers Bonus Stages, but also the game at large, and that is the AI. Now, VR Troopers is clearly aimed at children who watched the TV show. The AI was apparently programmed with training them into the Tournament Ready ‘Win at all costs’ mindset, because if the opponent gets you in a corner, you have had it. They will simply not allow you up and back into the action, you will be trapped and low kicked as soon as you try to rise, even on the lowest difficulty, actually titled ‘Kids’. The game’s engine itself isn’t exactly tournament worthy mind, it uses a 3 button setup not too far removed from the Megadrive Power Rangers game, but in reality closer to the system employed by early SNK fighters. You’ve got Throw, Punch and Kick. On Kids mode you can assign your character’s special moves to X,Y and Z if you have a 6 Button pad to make things a bit easier. For a game aimed at kids this is simple enough to pick up, and special moves are accomplished in very simple ways, such as pressing forward and Punch or all 3 buttons together. Sadly the response of the special move commands leaves something to be desired, despite the fact the regular attacks, throws aside, which can be quite annoying, and character movement independently don’t have any problems.
Naturally combat is fairly simplistic, but the problem is it’s perhaps a bit too simplistic, even for kids. The biggest combo it’s possible to achieve seems to be 3 hits, and I think that was more down to luck than good judgement. Characters are knocked over too easily, making fights very stop-start. This is made clear with one of Kaitlin’s special moves, a punch followed by a heel kick, brilliantly titled ‘Punch and Kick’ by the game, which, despite being a 2-hit move, can only actually hit the opponent once, because if the punch connects then the opponent will be knocked to the deck. It’s a real shame because there’s no obvious hit-detection issues, the jumping physics are far from the worst I’ve encountered from a 16-Bit fighter and 3 Special moves per character isn’t too shabby at all. Despite the fact it came out years after it, I wasn’t expecting SF2 level gameplay, but the fact that unless you turn the timer off 90% of your matches will end with a time-up due to how much time the fighters spend on the floor really frustrates me. Something that surprised me quite a bit was the fact the game implements Air Blocking, which is odd because it really isn’t needed very often.
What’s really surprising about the game, in a good way, is it’s visuals. While the sprites aren’t the biggest you’ll see, and look a bit crap size-wise compared to your Super Streetfighter 2, Mortal Kombat 2 and Fatal Fury’s, they are bigger than the ones in Sega’s Power Rangers (probably the game it’s fairer to compare this to, seeing as they were aiming for much the same target) and the animation is actually really quite good. The fighters, especially the troopers, all move fluidly, and some specials, such as JB’s Laser Lance really shows some nice movement of the sprite, where other games would just have had him jump from his standing posture to the firing/wielding stance and just focus on the beam/lance, this has him swing his arms round in a fluid move, the lance appear and fire. Kamelion, who has no legs and exudes smokey stuff, is rather excellent too. My only complaints with the sprites is that the game features one of the most blatant examples of Sagat-Switching-Eyepatch-Syndrome ever, where Ryan Steel, whose costume is half-red/half-blue always has it’s Red-side facing the player, even when you change direction, and with the same character, a bit of laziness on the part of the programmers when it comes to ‘Clone Ryan’, who is Ryan’s sprite in different colours, until you activate his ‘Overdrive’ mode, where he gets faster and stronger, and to signify this, flashes white. Only when it’s performed with Clone Ryan, he still flashes white and Blue/Red alternately, a minor thing I know, but it’s noticeable.
The backgrounds are all rather nice looking too, nothing too spectacular, but certainly nothing to seriously complain about. Some of them are clearly based on locales from the show, such as a skyline with the Ziktor building in the background, Grimlord’s Lair and on top of the VR Jet, with generic swamp, junkyard and forest stages, some having day/night alternate versions. The Grimlord’s lair stage is probably the most disappointing one, not because it’s a bad looking stage, just because it could have looked better. In the show his throne was flanked by hordes of his monsters and was all cold and metallic. Here it’s empty barring him on his thrown, Shao Kahn style (albeit too small to look as cool) and couple of statues, not to mention a roaring fire and a red carpet which make it seem a bit too homely for a megalomaniac’s den. While none of the stages have much going on in the background in the way of animation, they are all nicely detailed and in some cases full of colour.
It’s a bit harder to get enthusiastic about the game’s sound I’m afraid. It features a fuzzy voice sample of the troopers counting down, which I think they did before transforming, at the opening menu, and there are a few grunting noises for the characters during the fights. What is amusing is that there are only 2 voices, one for the heroes and one for the villains, meaning Kaitlin grunts in the same voice as Ryan and JB. The music isn’t exactly memorable, but at the same time does a job of capturing the feel of a cheesy 90s children’s tv show pretty well. Strangely, the show’s theme tune is nowhere to be found, though this isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it was awful.
To be honest, it’s quite hard to judge VR Troopers in this day and age. It’s over a decade old, based on a kid’s tv show of the same age, for a console that died generations ago. It also isn’t granted the same leeway as other games of it’s sort from me, on the grounds that I first played it when I was 21, so nostalgia can’t help it. It’s certainly not the worst Fighting game released for the Megadrive, I can probably name several worse off the top of my head, but at the same time, that doesn’t make it good, and I can’t really see any reason for anyone to seek this out today unless they have a soft spot for the series and are prepared for a less than stellar gaming experience.
